Individual and combined effects of moringa leaf, ginger and garlic powder on growth and innate immune response of Clarias gariepinus juveniles

Abstract

The study aimed to compare the growth-promoting and innate immune gene expression of phyto-biotics powder; moringa leaf, ginger, garlic, and a combination of the three, as well as a control diet fed to Clarias gariepinus. Relative to the juveniles in the control diet, growth and nutrient utilization indices of juveniles in phyto-additive diets increased, with fish fed with garlic having higher growth and feed utilization in terms of weight gain: 381.6 ± 71, feed conversion ratio: 2.7 ± 0.39, specific growth rate: 0.849 ± 1.72 and relative growth rate: 2.932 ± 0.23 when compared to the control fish fed diet as well as moringa and a combination of the phyto-biotics fed supplements. The expression of the innate immune gene TnF-α was observed to be downregulated in C. gariepinus fed with phyto-biotics fed supplements; moringa, ginger, garlic, and their combination having a fold change of; 0.124 ± 0.034, 0.196 ± 0.145, 0.288 ± 0.088, 0.097 ± 0.30, respectively while upregulated in fish fed with a control fish-fed diet having a fold change of 1.436 ± 0.791. This finding indicates that the use of garlic and ginger supplements can enhance growth performance and nutrient utilization while providing anti-inflammatory benefits in Clarias gariepinus.

Keywords

• Clarias gariepinus
• cytokine
• gene expression
• inflammation
• nutrigenomics
• TNF-α